The Intriguers mh-14 Read online

  I tipped up the motor so I could look it over carefully. A switch on the console did the job for me hydraulically, since the giant mill weighed over two hundred and fifty pounds. Aside from being larger than any outboard motor with which I'd ever associated, it looked perfectly normal. The horsepower was plainly marked on the cover; it also figured in the model number stamped on a plate attached to the mounting bracket.

  Searching for a clue, I frowned down at the big three bladed propeller, just clear of the water. According to the factory literature I had available, this V-4 motor block came in several different standard configurations ranging from 85 to 125 horsepower, depending on bore and carburetion. The least powerful motor in the series, the one I was presumably looking at, normally turned a prop with a pitch of some fifteen to seventeen inches. The motor at the stratospheric top of the line swung a wheel with considerably more pitch-with that much extra power, you could drive a boat considerably farther with each turn of the screw.

  It took some acrobatics to read the figures marked on my propeller without falling overboard, but when I saw them I had my answer. The pitch was a healthy twenty-one inches, enough to take a real bite of ocean. What was hanging on my transom was apparently not a normal 85-hp motor at all, since such a mild power plant couldn't possibly have got that steeply pitched wheel up to maximum rpm. Either I had a specially souped-up 85 on my hands or, more likely, somebody had simply taken a 125-hp model and switched covers and identification plates. No wonder the little boat had felt squirrely wide open, I reflected grimly, propelled by almost fifty percent more than her rated horsepower..

  The wash of a passing vessel made me look up quickly, remembering what I was there for. Several boats were heading into the channel, but they were all larger craft, refugees from the offshore fishing grounds I'd deserted earlier. A fast runabout with some kids on board-a scow-shaped job with an inboard-outboard propulsion unit-came buzzing out from the yacht basin, stuck its blunt nose out into the rough stuff, turned quickly, and came back in again. Each boat that passed sent its wake across the narrows to rock my little vessel and break against the nearby shore.

  I reeled in my line and found that something had stolen my sardine. I replaced it and tossed it out again. I lifted the cushion off the bench seat just forward of the steering console and procured beer and sandwiches from the built-in icebox underneath. All the comforts of home, I reflected wryly; all the comforts and conveniences including a reserve of sonic ten knots that nobody'd expect the little bucket to produce, looking at the markings on the motor-forty camouflaged horsepower that Mac had neglected to mention, describing the craft over the phone, when I'd called him from the hospital where I'd been sweating out the mild concussion I'd acquired in the line of duty.

  "Guaymas, Eric?" he'd said, employing my code name as usual. My real name is Matthew Helm, but it doesn't get much use inside the organization. "What's so attractive about Guaymas, if I may ask?"

  "Fish, I hope, sir," I said. "And a nice, warm, sunny beach."

  "You can find good fishing and warm sunny beaches in this country. I should think you'd be a little tired of Mexico. You've been spending quite a bit of time there recently."

  I frowned at the wall of the hospital room from which I was being evicted for being too healthy. Mac had promised me a month's convalescent leave, but he has a sneaky habit of trying to get a little government mileage out of our vacations by spotting us where we'll be handy in case he needs us.

  I said, "Would you rather have me in California, sir? Or Texas, or Florida, or the Sea Islands of Georgia?" I mean, the only way to stop him when he starts getting subtle is by direct frontal attack. "Just name the spot, sir, and I'll be on my way. Of course, I'll expect to get my month's leave later, when you don't require my services any longer."

  "Oh, no, you misunderstand me, Eric," he said hastily, two thousand miles away in Washington, D.C. I could visualize him sitting at his desk in front of the bright window he liked to make us squint at: a lean, gray-clad, gray-haired man with bushy black eyebrows. He went on, "No, indeed, I have no special place in mind. I was just curious about the fascination Mexico seems to hold for you. You say you plan to do sonic saltwater fishing'?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Then you'll be needing a boat, won't you?"

  "I was planning to rent one when I got down there."

  "Rental boats are seldom very satisfactory. As it happens, we have a fairly expensive little fishing craft lying idle in Tucson, Arizona, not very far from where you are. We're going to have to dispose of it soon, since it has served its purpose. In the meantime, you might as well get some use out of it."

  In one of the clumsy rented tubs from the marina, with a rusty old kicker on the stern, I'd have been a helpless target just now, I reminded myself. I'd had some luck, sure, but essentially it was the speed and maneuverability of my borrowed vessel that had saved me. It was an interesting coincidence. I didn't believe it for a moment.

  I didn't even try to sell myself the foolish notion that, when an attempt was made to murder me, I'd just accidentally been sitting at the controls of a boat lent me by Mac that just accidentally happened to have the power and agility to get me away unharmed. Things like that just didn't happen accidentally when you were dealing with Mac. I didn't even put it past him-well, not very far past him-to have sent that sea lion to turn me off course at precisely the right moment to save me from a bullet, if he needed me alive and healthy for an impending mission.

  All joking aside, I didn't really think he could have known I'd be shot at down here in Mexico. He's not omniscient, not quite. But he had obviously known, I reasoned, that there was trouble brewing at sea, or at least as far out at sea-some sea, somewhere-as you'd want to take a fifteen-foot outboard. He'd hoped to persuade me to spend my leave in the neighborhood of the potential danger spot, wherever it might be, bringing with me the disguised little seagoing rocket the department had just acquired for the job. I was rapidly losing faith in that mysterious agent who was supposed to have used it before me. Thinking back, I realized that there had been a good many indications, which I'd been too preoccupied to take seriously, that neither boat, trailer, nor tow car had seen any strenuous use before I got them.

  When my thorny attitude had spoiled his plan-for some reason he'd been reluctant to give me direct orders over the phone-Mac had lent me the boat anyway and let me take it down here and play with it so I'd at least know how to handle it when the time came for him to summon me to action. And somebody had come clear down into Mexico to take care of me with a scope-sighted rifle before that summons could reach me…

  I could be reading too much into a simple little murder attempt amid a camouflaged 125-lip motor. Nevertheless, the safest course was to act on the assumption that I was entangled in one of Mac's complicated spiderwebs of intrigue, amid figure out, since my vacation was all washed up anyway, what he'd want me to do next. That wasn't hard. I was already working at it. Obviously, the first thing required was to deal with any would-be murderers in such a way that they couldn't hamper my future activities.

  By the end of the day, I'd finished the beer and the bait and was fishing, if you want to call it that, with a bare hook. It was a long, dull afternoon in one way; but they're never really dull when you're waiting like that in a duck blind, or by a deer trail, or in a promising ambush. There was always the possibility, of course, that my quarry had escaped in some other direction; but the most likely theory was that he'd been working out of San Carlos like me, behaving like just another tourist and keeping an eye on me.

  And if he'd come out of San Carlos, he'd want to check back in there, because they keep track of the craft using their marina facilities. I considered it a good enough theory that I was willing to wait until sunset and at least an hour longer, if I had to.

  I didn't have to. At six-thirty, with the sun just starting to dip behind the spectacular rock formations to the west, his patience ran out, and he came. I first glimpsed a flash of spray well
out beyond the point; then I saw the white skiff driving along with the whitecapped waves that threatened to overwhelm it. I was already reeling in my fishing line. This late in the afternoon, I saw, in this weather, we had the whole Sea of Cortez to ourselves.

  Laying the rod down, I quickly lowered the motor and turned the key. The big mill began to rumble behind me, shaking the little fiberglass hull. I hauled up the anchor, dumped it aboard, and backed the boat out of its hidey hole very cautiously: this was no time to bend the propeller on a rock. Then I shoved the go-stick forward, and we took off flying.

  He saw me coming. He turned, as soon as the waves would let him, and tried to flee. It was kind of pitiful, actually; just about as pitiful as me innocently chasing seals with his telescope crosshairs tracking me. I shot down the bay at flank speed, mostly airborne; but this time I throttled back in good time before hitting the heavy stuff out past the point. He was plunging through it, or trying to, heading hack the way he'd come. Actually, his light boat wasn't making much progress against the waves and the wind. The extra weight and freeboard of my craft, not to mention the extra horsepower, made it no contest. I simply walked up on him as if his little motor had stopped running.

  I don't mean to imply that it was smooth and easy. It was a rough, wet chase while it lasted, with a lot of spray flying; but the big crested rollers out of the northwest turned out to be more frightening to look at than dangerous to ride. At fifty yards he went for the rifle. This was ridiculous. He couldn't even hold the thing to his shoulder for managing the boat, and he couldn't have found me in the big sniper's telescope if he had, the way the seas were tossing him around. He fired a couple of times, kind of one-handed and from the hip. I never saw or heard the bullets. While he was working the bolt for a third shot, a wave threw him off balance and he almost fell overboard. The firearm went into the sea as he grabbed the gunwale with both hands to catch himself. So much for that.

  The rest was simple. The most vulnerable spot of his boat was the low stern, cut down to accommodate the outboard motor. On larger boats like mine, that motor notch is protected by the splashwell inboard that I've already mentioned, that catches a boarding wave and lets it drain back out again, but his little tub had no such protection. Anything that came through the motor cutout wound up right in the boat with him.

  On my first pass, he kicked his stern aside at the last moment by yanking desperately at the motor's control handle. I swung around with him, using all the throttle I dared in that seaway, and he took in some twenty gallons of my wake in spite of his evasive maneuver. The next pass was a clean miss as a rogue wave threw us far apart at the last moment, but I came right around and had a beautiful shot past his stern as he hit the next sea too hard, shipped more water over the bow, and almost lost headway completely, throttling back to keep from driving his little boat clear under.

  I had a good look at him as I came up on him fast: a tallish man, not old, not Mexican, clean-shaven, kind of boyishly handsome, with a tanned face amid wet brown hair cut short enough to put him well into the ranks of the squares. It made no difference to me. Square or hip, he'd tried to kill me. To hell with his haircut.

  I gave a quick burst of power and roared past at planing speed, missing his stern by less than two feet. Looking back, I saw the white curling wake roll clear over his motor and transom, right into the boat. An oncoming wave finished the job. I got my bucking and plunging little nautical projectile under control, turned her like a cutting horse between waves, and charged back there. He was clinging helplessly to the swamped skiff that was still afloat, of course-they're all loaded with plastic flotation these days so you can't really sink them-but when lie saw half a ton of speedboat coming at him own the face of a wave, he kicked himself clear and dove. I don't know what he thought I was going to do, run him down, I suppose, or brain him with a boathook. Anyway, he submerged and presumably swam off, making my job that much easier.

  I didn't even bother to look for him. I simply slowed down, swung around, and grabbed the braided nylon painter trailing from the bow of the skiff. Then I headed for shore, towing the swamped boat with me, leaving him swimming out there in the oncoming darkness.

  III.

  According to the marina records, his name was Joel W. Patterson. At least that was the name written down opposite the registration number of the boat I'd towed in. He came from San Bernardino, California. He had arrived in San Carlos two days after I had. He'd been staying in a pickup camper at the trailer court across the road.

  "Yes, senor, I remember him a little," said the young lady behind the counter in the marina office, where you could buy bait and tackle, arrange for dock space, and hire anything from a single rod-and-reel outfit to a large fishing vessel complete with captain and crew. She went on, "He was expecting to meet a friend here, someone from Arizona, I think. He looked through my book of registration here. But I do not think the friend ever came. I never saw him with anyone. He was quite a~ handsome young man, but alone, always alone."

  He'd undoubtedly been looking for my name and boat number, to make sure I'd arrived so he could get to work on me. I said, "Well, he's still alone, I guess."

  "Si, senor. It is a terrible thing. I have sent one of the party boats out to search, but in the darkness and in this wind there is not much hope. You did not see him at all?"

  "No, I was fishing along the shore and I saw something white drifting off the point," I said. "I went out to have a look and there was the boat full of water with nobody on board. I cruised around it a bit, but I couldn't see anybody swimming, so I just grabbed the rope and brought it in." I rubbed my sore hands together. "It wasn't easy. The damn thing towed like a dead whale."

  "You did what you could, Senor Helm." She was a very attractive young lady, and she ran the marina operation very efficiently, but what really impressed me was that she turned up for work each morning in a simple cotton dress. A US female in her job with her figure couldn't have resisted appearing in a ducky little sailor-boy pantsuit plastered all over with cute gold anchors, just to show how nautical she was. "You are staying at the Posada San Carlos? The authorities may wish to ask you some more questions, Senor Helm."

  "Sure," I said. "I'll be there until tomorrow morning some time-well, if they insist on my staying on, I suppose I'll have to."

  "I do not think that will be necessary."

  "In that case," I said, "I'll pay my bill and pick up my boat tomorrow. Is there any chance of getting somebody to wash it down for me after I get it on the trailer?"

  "Certainly, senor. The price is six dollars. You had better come early while the tide is high so you have plenty of water at the launching ramp… Excuse me."

  She turned to take a call on the electronic gizmo behind her, speaking Spanish too rapid and colloquial for me to follow. She put down the microphone and sighed, turning back to me.

  "That was the captain of the boat I sent out. He says it is very dark out there, and he has found nothing. I told him to come back in." She moved her shoulders. "If they will insist on taking such little boats out in such bad weather… They cannot be made to understand that this is a big and dangerous body of water, senor. They see it so calm and smooth in the morning and will not believe how it can get rough by evening."

  "Sure."

  I went back down to the dock to get the tackle I'd left in the boat, although I'd had no trouble with pilferage, and neither had anybody else with whom I'd talked. Gear that would have vanished in an hour from a US parking lot had stayed safely on board week after week, but it seemed unfair to strain some poor Mexican's honesty with a couple of expensive rods and a pair of good binoculars.

  After lifting the stuff onto the dock, ready to carry ashore, I checked the lines and rearranged the canvas bumpers so she wouldn't chafe. Then I went over to the aluminum skiff docked astern, still full of water, just the way I'd brought it in but not quite the way I'd found it. I'd taken the precaution, once I'd got it into relatively calm water, to check it over. There ha
d been a soggy box of 7 mm Remington Magnum rifle cartridges, partly used, tucked under a seat. Lashed to one of the braces I'd found a long, soft, black plastic fishing rod case that was arranged a little differently inside from what you'd expect. I'd slipped the cartridge box into the case, for weight, zipped up the case, and dropped it overboard in exactly one hundred and ten feet of water-assuming that the electronic depth-finder on my fancy little borrowed ship was properly calibrated.

  Now I frowned down at the registration number on the bow of the skiff, a California number of course, amid debated whether or not to risk a visit to Mr. Joel Patterson's camper across the road, but I couldn't think of anything I might find that would be worth the attention and suspicion I might attract. I found myself wondering how long he'd lasted out there, and dismissed the thought.

  Then I deliberately brought it back out and examined it, because if you're going to do it you'd damn well better be able to look it in the eye. I have no respect for these remote-control killers who can happily push a bomb release in a high-flying airplane as long as they don't have to see the blasted bodies hundreds of feet below; but who can't bear to pull the trigger of a.45 auto and produce one bloody corpse at ten yards.

  There was a chance that he'd made it ashore or would still make it. I'd known men who could have, but I didn't think he was one of that select group of amphibious humans. His specific gravity had been too great, for one thing: he'd had too much bone and too little fat for adequate flotation. I've got the same problem myself. He'd looked like a lean, tanned, swimming-pool hero to me, good only for impressing the bikini babes with a couple of smoking-fast laps between drinks, not the chunky, buoyant, durable fish-man type it usually takes to survive in stormy waters a couple of miles offshore.